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Kurt Andersen (born August 22, 1954) is an American writer and was the host of the Peabody-winning public radio program ''
Studio 360 ''Studio 360'' was an American weekly public radio program about the arts and culture hosted by novelist Kurt Andersen and produced by Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and ''Slate'' in New York City. The program's stated goal was to "Get inside the ...
'', a production of
Public Radio International Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States. PRI was one of the main providers of programmi ...
, ''Slate'', and
WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that ...
.


Early life and education

Andersen was born in
Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest ...
. He graduated from Westside High School. He graduated magna cum laude from
Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...
.


Journalism

While a student at Harvard, he edited the ''
Harvard Lampoon ''The Harvard Lampoon'' is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview The ''Harvard Lampoon'' publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates ...
''. In 1986 with E. Graydon Carter he co-founded '' Spy'' magazine, which they sold in 1991; it continued publishing until 1998. While writing for ''Spy'', Andersen and Carter coined the notable insult "short-fingered vulgarian" for future United States President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
. He has been a writer and columnist for ''
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
'' ("The Imperial City"), ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' ("The Culture Industry"), and ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' ("Spectator"). He was also the architecture and design critic for ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' for nine years. In 1996, Bill Reilly fired Andersen after two and a half years from his position as editor-in-chief at ''New York'', citing the publication's financial results. Andersen attributed the firing to his refusal to kill a story about a rivalry between investment bankers
Felix Rohatyn Felix George Rohatyn ( ; May 29, 1928 – December 14, 2019) was an American investment banker and diplomat. He spent most of his career with Lazard, where he brokered numerous large corporate mergers and acquisitions from the 1960s through ...
and
Steven Rattner Steven Lawrence Rattner (born July 5, 1952) is a New York investment asset manager who served as lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry in 2009.
that had upset
Henry Kravis Henry R. Kravis (born January 6, 1944) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.Primedia Primedia is a South African media group, headquartered in Sandton, Johannesburg. History Primedia was established in 1994 and its listing on the JSE Securities Exchange was completed in April 1995. Primedia remained listed on the JSE until 1 O ...
; Primedia closed the site in October 2001. From 2001 to 2004 he served as a senior creative consultant to
Barry Diller Barry Charles Diller (born February 2, 1942) is an American businessman. He is Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia Group and founded the Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. Diller was inducted into the Television Hall o ...
's
Universal Television Universal Television LLC (abbreviated as UTV) is an American television production company that is a subsidiary of Universal Studio Group, a division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. It serves as the network television production arm of NBC; a prede ...
, and from 2003 to 2005 as editorial director of ''
Colors Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associa ...
'' magazine. More recently, he co-founded the email cultural curation service Very Short List and was a guest op-ed columnist for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and editor-at-large for
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
. He co-created ''
Studio 360 ''Studio 360'' was an American weekly public radio program about the arts and culture hosted by novelist Kurt Andersen and produced by Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and ''Slate'' in New York City. The program's stated goal was to "Get inside the ...
'', a weekly program covering the arts and culture, which he hosted from its launch in 2000 to its last episode in 2020. It was broadcast on 240 U.S. stations, and remains available as a podcast.


Literary works

Andersen is the author of three novels, including ''
Turn of the Century Turn of the century, in its broadest sense, refers to the transition from one century to another. The term is most often used to indicate a distinctive time period either before or after the beginning of a century or both before and after. Ac ...
'' (Random House, 1999), which was a national bestseller and ''New York Times'' Notable Book of the Year, and the ''New York Times'' bestseller ''
Heyday Heyday may refer to: * Titled works: ** Music: *** ''Heyday'' (The Church album), a 1986 album by the Church *** ''Heyday'' (Fairport Convention album), a 1987 album by Fairport Convention ** ''Heyday'' (novel), a historical novel by Kurt Ander ...
'' (Random House, 2007), which won the Langum Prize for the best American historical fiction of 2007. Random House published his third novel, ''True Believers'', in the summer of 2012, and it was named one of the best novels of that year by the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and the ''Washington Post''. His short fiction has been published in anthologies such as ''Stories: All-New Tales'' (HarperCollins, 2010). Andersen has also published a book of humorous essays, ''The Real Thing'' (Doubleday, 1980; Holt, 1982; Bison Press, 2008), about "quintessentialism", and co-authored two humor books, ''Tools of Power'' (Viking, 1980), a parody of
self-help Self-help or self-improvement is a self-guided improvement''APA Dictionary of Physicology'', 1st ed., Gary R. VandenBos, ed., Washington: American Psychological Association, 2007.—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a subs ...
books on becoming successful, and ''Loose Lips'' (
Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publi ...
, 1995), an anthology of edited transcripts of real-life conversations involving celebrated people. Along with Carter and George Kalogerakis he assembled a history and greatest-hits anthology of '' Spy'' called ''Spy: The Funny Years'', published in 2006 by Miramax Books. He also wrote ''Reset'' (Random House, 2009), an essay about the causes and aftermath of the Great Recession, and he has contributed to many other books, such as ''Spark: How Creativity Works'' (HarperCollins, 2011), and ''Fields of Vision: The Photographs of John Vachon'' (Library of Congress, 2010). In 2017, he published two books, '' Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History'', which explains American society's peculiar susceptibility to falsehoods and illusions (Random House, ), and with
Alec Baldwin Alexander Rae Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. In his early career, Baldwin played both leading and supporting roles in a variety of films such as Tim Burton's '' Beetlejuice'' (1988), Mike Nic ...
''You Can't Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President'' (Penguin, ), a parody Trump memoir. Excerpts from ''Fantasyland'' appeared as a cover story in ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', and in ''Slate.'' Both books were ''New York Times'' bestsellers, and ''Fantasyland,'' which the ''Times Book Review'' called "a great revisionist history of America," reached #3 on the nonfiction list. In August 2020, he published '' Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America'', which examines the coordinated efforts to achieve conservative economical and political changes in the United States from the 1970s to 2020, and discusses how the resulting unfettered
laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...
approach to capitalism has resulted in an extreme level of
economic inequality There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of ...
.


Personal life

Andersen lives in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
, with his wife, author Anne Kreamer and two daughters Kate and Lucy.


Bibliography


Books

;Novels * ''
Turn of the Century Turn of the century, in its broadest sense, refers to the transition from one century to another. The term is most often used to indicate a distinctive time period either before or after the beginning of a century or both before and after. Ac ...
'' (Random House, 1999) * ''
Heyday Heyday may refer to: * Titled works: ** Music: *** ''Heyday'' (The Church album), a 1986 album by the Church *** ''Heyday'' (Fairport Convention album), a 1987 album by Fairport Convention ** ''Heyday'' (novel), a historical novel by Kurt Ander ...
'' (Random House, 2007) * ''True Believers'' (Random House, 2012) ;Humor * ''The Real Thing'' (Doubleday, 1980; Holt, 1982; Bison Press, 2008) * ''Tools of Power: The Elitist's Guide to the Ruthless Exploitation of Everybody and Everything'' (Viking, 1980) * ''Loose Lips: Real Words, Real People, Real Funny'' (with Jamie Malanowski and Lisa Birnbach) (Simon & Schuster, 1995) * ''Spy : The Funny Years'' (with George Kalogerakis and Graydon Carter) (Miramax Books, 2006) * ''You Can't Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President'' (with Alec Baldwin) (Penguin, 2017) * ''Hasta La Vista America: Trump's Farewell Address ;Non-fiction * ''Reset'' (Random House, 2009) * '' Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History'' (Random House, 2017) * '' Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History'' (Penguin Random House, 2020)


Essays, reporting, and other contributions

* * Anderson, Kurt,
The Anti-vaccine Right Brought Human Sacrifice to America
', ''The Atlantic'', January 25, 2022


References


External links


Official website

Studio 360

Appearance on ''The Filter Podcast''
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Andersen, Kurt 1954 births Living people 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists American atheists American columnists American magazine founders American magazine staff writers American male non-fiction writers American male novelists People with type 1 diabetes American talk radio hosts The Atlantic (magazine) people Harvard College alumni The Harvard Lampoon alumni Novelists from New York (state) Public Radio International personalities Time (magazine) people Vanity Fair (magazine) people Writers from Omaha, Nebraska